


heureux, heureux à en mourir

by Lizzen



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Asphyxiation, Cannibalism, Multi, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-14
Updated: 2013-05-14
Packaged: 2017-12-10 18:44:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/789003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizzen/pseuds/Lizzen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a serial killer escapes police custody in Memphis, a drunk in Florida utterly surrenders and Abigail Hobbs finds herself all over again. The tangled, tangled web they weave together. [TV-verse, but set during Silence of the Lambs]</p>
            </blockquote>





	heureux, heureux à en mourir

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the TV-verse but fast forwarded into the future during the events of Silence of the Lambs.

_"Hobbs had caught this girl from behind and he had a knife. He was cutting her with it. And I shot him." "Did the girl die?" 'No." "She got all right?" "After a while, yes. She's all right now."- Red Dragon_

*  
Abigail chews absently on her pen at a coffee shop near Quantico. A man sits close to her and she ignores him. Her mind is completely vacant, which is her wont because _Dear Christ_ the things that float around in that head of hers, especially now. 

Two days ago, her twitter feed blew up and CNN got everything wrong before it course corrected following a brief, bitter press conference in Memphis. Her phone rang and rang, deep into the night until she finally shut it off, put on running clothes, and ran out to the track to run laps until her legs shook. 

If Freddie Lounds still lived, she would have woken up to flame red hair at her door. As it was, Abigail Hobbs, the surviving daughter of one of the nation's notorious serial killers, isn't on the short list for interviews. The public and their fickle attention. 

With Buffalo Bill still at large, Dr. Bloom and Agent Crawford are a little tied up. They both called her cell, left messages and promises.

There is really no one else who cares to check in on her now; no one to see the circles around her eyes, and the way her fingers shake on a tremulous journey to touch her scar. 

Abigail's really tired of the coffee in front of her and lets it cool down almost to tepid. Hot coffee reminds her too much of the temperature of warm blood in the body, rolling out of a wound and cooling rapidly in the air. She loves it usually, but not today.

The work in front of her is really going nowhere and so she looks up and away from it, considers leaving. The man is gone, but his heat signature remains. 

*  
She finds the note in her bag that evening. The note says: "You look beautiful protecting my interests." Her heart thuds so fast in her chest, she cannot see or breathe. She's still sticky from a fresh encounter that went exactly the way she wanted it to go, but the shower will have to wait.

Her hand searches for her phone and she scrolls down to the bottom of her contacts. She had thought, three days ago, of deleting the number completely; it's marked "z_do not call".

A voice answers, a deeply slurred "hello". She hasn't heard his voice in years, and her entire body relaxes at the sound.

"I'm flying out to the Keys first thing tomorrow." She knows he'll be coming for Will next; she will not miss seeing him before he slips into the ether. Even if it means seeing him carve Will up for good. 

She flips her email open on her iPad as Will stutters her name in surprise. There's an email from United in her inbox, flight purchased and transit arranged. All in her name, paid for by a credit card number she doesn't know. Her hand trembles.

"Will, William," she repeats until he says "yes, yes, I hear you. I'm here." No slurring, he sounds suddenly and completely sober.

She thinks hard about what she could say, and finally lands on: "We're coming for you."

He hangs up on her immediately and she clutches at her face, horrified at herself. Years ago, her father had warned her: "slow, walk slowly."

As she chokes sobs into the shower, her phone buzzes. "OK" is the text. (Will's fingers shook so hard, he couldn't type out the rest of what he wanted to say.)

*  
Abigail looks at the for sale sign in front of the beach house in Marathon, and then smiles charmingly at her cab driver. "Yes, this is it."

At the door, a figure looms, thinner and browner than she remembers. His face is now a nightmare, but she was prepared and doesn't blink. She drops her bag in the driveway, waits for the cab to leave. Will doesn't move towards her, looks imprisoned in the doorway, unable to look away from her.

She drinks him in and then looks to the deck by the water. A man is sitting there, reading the paper and drinking a tall glass of tea.

The tears rolling down her face are hotter than blood; the skin at her neck throbs, a thin white line that no one really notices unless they know her, recognize her. The Florida sun burns, but she cannot move.

They stay like this for some time; Hannibal ignoring them, Will staring at her, Abigail at a crossroads.

A lot is riding on what she does next; the world is spinning because this could all go horribly, horribly wrong if she makes a misstep, says the wrong thing. She had written them both off in the previous years. Will would have nothing to do with her; and there were only so many letters she would write in code and send to the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, posing as an interested student of psychology. (And Chilton let so few of the response letters go.) Her heart was a cauterized wound; a hurt that stopped bleeding long ago.

How wrong, how wrong, how wrong she was. 

Long ago, Abigail Hobbs almost bled out between them, and now: she's the one who has to hold herself together to keep from passing out.

She's close to thirty, and her heart beats like a teenager, but she finds her legs. The decision is hard, it's so hard; it's not what she wants to do first, but father dearest taught her everything she knows, and she knows which of the herd is the weakest.

Hands behind her back, moving slow as if through water, she goes to Will. Beneath all the shards of his brokenness, he's still every bit the same. If he wasn't, he would have left. He had plenty of warning. 

The last time she saw him, years and years ago, he had held her at arm's length; unable to comfort her as he spiraled into a bitter darkness. She had needed him then, needed him so much that all she could taste was ash in her throat as he pushed her away. 

Now: she's the stronger one. Now: she's able to forgive. Now: there's a shadow of a smile in his eyes, and it gives her hope.

When she's standing close, her sandal toes brushing against his bare feet, she murmurs, "It's my turn." The lioness is in the room, and he cannot deny her anymore.

*  
She's learned a lot since her time with them, and he’s obviously gotten used to one way of pleasure since he wed, so it's almost explosive, what they get up to on his couch. He's been opened up earlier (she had been right; Hannibal had greeted him the same way) and she rides him hard before pulling him deep inside her, begging him to touch her neck as she comes.

"What if I--" he stutters. Before, this was never allowed without supervision, without Hannibal present to safely pry Will's fingers from her skin. 

But she shakes her head. "Do it." It's not that she trusts him; it's that she's not willing to wait. 

His hands are warm around her throat and she gasps, finally feeling alive for the first time in years. Something changes in his eyes and his grip tightens. "God, I've wanted you, wanted this," she gasps, and then loses any ability to speak for some time.

He cradles her afterwards and she leans her face against his neck, smelling him so deeply and pushing his already wet fingers inside of her to rest there until she's ready for him again.

His skin is marked, new bite and suck marks in all the old places. "You're so beautiful," she tells him, wanting him, wanting to open up his chest and hold his heart in her hands. 

"You murdered someone yesterday." His fingers twist inside of her. 

She nods against his skin. There is only a trace of blood left in her fingernails. She was in a hurry to get here. 

"I've kept track, since." He doesn't complete the sentence. Another twist and she's opened her mouth to kiss the words away from his tongue.

*  
He's asleep soon after, and she cleans him up with a towel before carefully cleaning herself off in a shower. She finds Will's copious stores of tequila and takes two shots for her nerves. It's been some time since she arrived, and her heart steadies its rhythm at last.

Finally, finally, she takes to the deck, runs on bare feet on the old wood to see a man watching the sea.

Hannibal looks up at her and sniffs into the salty air. "Honestly, _where_ does he buy his soap?"

She clambers on top of his lap and presses her mouth to his so fast, they're both startled by the action. It's her only misstep that day, but he forgives her. 

How can he not?

*  
Even now, she is overwhelmed by him. As much as she wishes to consume him fully, he's better at this game, and she is lost, lost, lost. 

Every inch of her shuddering, she comes again, and the sandy grime of Will's old deck chairs grinds into her clenched hands. Just after, the question she thought over and over on the plane comes to her lips, but she holds off. Curious and now quiet, she waits for Hannibal to finish, putting her worries on hold just to see his face, his eyes open and watching her. He looks different, his eyes have an entirely different color to them.

But his rage, his power is still the same. She feels whole when her legs are wrapped around him and his hands are holding her tight.

She has rage herself, rage at those who put him between four walls and denied him his freedom. Her rage, somehow, skips over the man the most at fault.

(His rage doesn't.)

"I lost you, right at the end," he says. She stiffens, wishing he couldn't read her, as if he could lose the ability after years under lock and key with nothing better to do. "Where did you go?"

She thinks before saying the name and she's still holding him inside of her, clenching as his dick softens. "What about Jack?" 

She means: "are we in danger" and "when does this end?"

Hannibal chuckles, and places his hands around her neck where Will had been earlier. He shakes his head like a stern teacher before smiling softly and kissing her mouth. "We leave tomorrow."

"Together." It's not a question (it is a question).

He reaches down between them and thumbs at her clit; everything is so wet and sensitive that she whimpers in pain, shakes her head. He rubs at it carefully anyway before clutching her hip, recreating the memory of a bruise he gave her when she was so, so much younger.

His voice in her ear, and all around her. "My beautiful girl."

She gasps, because she is so happy and didn't know what to expect. There are so many things she wants to tell him, but words are like flame in her mouth.

He smiles, a courteous look on his pale face and rearranges them so that she's sitting on his lap, looking at the water with him. They always did see things the same way, after all.

*  
Hannibal carries her back into the house, and she's surprised at how strong he still is. There's some beautiful smell coming out of the kitchen, and he takes her there. 

Will's frying battered shrimp and his back is to them. He's tense, all hard muscle and scars. She thinks on all the times she asked Hannibal if they should carve him up between them, sharing the task and tasting the blood on each other's hands. "Don't ask me again," Hannibal would say, and then smile, months later when she whispered into his ear.

She's placed on her feet, and Hannibal seems loathe to stop touching her but they're not all together yet, not fully woven like they were. (She should be sitting on the countertop with Will between her legs; Hannibal cooking and plying them with little bites, sips of wine, teasing kisses.) Her skin feels like ice when he pulls away.

"You've improved your cooking, Will," Hannibal says, and it's his business tone. Will flinches, but keeps busy.

"Yes," Will replies, finally, and it's a broken sound. In the years since the trial, Will had taken formal lessons, spent time in kitchens, improved his palate. There are spices in the pantry that Molly never had any idea how to use. There are recipes Will tinkered with over the years until he knew they were stunning, impressive. If given the time and the right ingredients, Will could make a meal that would delight even the choosiest of chefs.

Hannibal takes note of the state of the kitchen (far better kept up than any other room in the house) and his eyes soften for the first time since she's seen him. He takes a step back and leans against the sink as if dazed. 

Will doesn't ask for help, continues his work with his back muscles growing tighter and tighter.

What Hannibal sees: the ghost of an elegant psychiatrist lingering as a shadow in the room. It's a familiar monster, he used to look at himself in the mirror in the old days and see it. That man no longer exists; something was ripped out of him all those years behind glass. Hannibal now is only an echo. Somewhere between the sadness in Will's eyes and the determination in Abigail's he might, he just might find himself. 

What Hannibal feels: pain; searing, terrible pain, as if he had plunged his own heart into the fizzling oil.

Love is a strange, wild beast.

*  
They barely talk during dinner; a few pleasantries about the quality of the food, and confirming the number of languages they speak. Hannibal is so pleased at Abigail's Italian; Will's Spanish. 

Abigail tries not to watch how much Hannibal savors the taste, flavors, and textures. Abigail doesn't ask why Will had a bottle of Henriot, with a year that Hannibal respects, chilled and ready. Abigail tries not to show how much she wishes they had skipped the formality of a family dinner.

She knows the punishment for being rude. 

They do, however, skip dessert.

*  
Will is like a starved man with them; and he's the only one of the three that has been fucked on the regular, thanks to the woman who walked out on him shortly after he returned from the hospital, his face still bandaged.

Abigail, of course, fucked who she liked; but she liked so few. She was more used to her own hand now with only her memory to inspire. Hannibal was truly the starved man, having barely touched himself since handcuffs first closed over his wrists.

Of the three of us, one was always crazier than the rest, Abigail thinks as Will loses any semblance of technique in his desire to consume them both.

Hannibal hauls Will off of her before she comes and gives her a pointed look. She holds onto the sensation, holds her breath. Hannibal is whispering something dark and terrible in Will's ear and his hand is clenched on Will's dick. It is probably painful, the words, the sensation. She longs to be the stronger one, push Hannibal away and take Will inside her again. A kindness.

Will shoots out over his stomach as Hannibal brings him off and kisses him with teeth and threats that curl into her mind like a disease. She is horrified by the words said before remembering the horrible place her good doctor has been.

Sometimes, mercy dulls the sharp knife of desire. Tonight, it seems, Hannibal has no mercy. (Little she knows.)

Abigail wants to cuddle in close, be the honey to Hannibal's vinegar; but she's immovable when Hannibal tells her not to move. She knows when to follow his directions, and when to explore other routes. Pity, however, clouds her, makes her face screw up and her fingers trace letters underneath Will's right knee. 

"Abigail," Hannibal beckons, and she crawls closer. "Comfort my lamb." His smile is so dark, she shudders.

He helps her shift, directs where she is to go, and at last, she understands him.

On her hands and knees above Will's tired form, she kisses Will's terror of a face while Hannibal sinks into her from behind. It's all so gentle that her heart stutters. Gone is the fury and the fervor, and now she feels like the conduit (again, again, again) between two electric points. Will's mouth tastes of blood, and she licks into it until it just tastes like her and him, and soon she fills it with her moans as Hannibal speeds up. Calmer, calmed, Will finds her clit and helps her off; she shudders and shakes between them, and she's clenching so hard that Hannibal rasps out in a language she doesn't know. She doesn't fall into Will's embrace until Hannibal is finished.

I love you, someone says, and someone else gasps as if stabbed.

Abigail can't breathe between them both, which is how it has always been, how it always should be.

*  
Before, both of them obsessed about her scar, the pads of their fingers sliding along her skin, both new and old, with a faraway look on their faces. So often she sat on the floor next to Hannibal's cushioned chairs, with a warm hand at her neck. 

Now, she sits with Will's head in her naked lap; one hand is curled in his hair, caressing it like she always used to, and the other traces the scars on his face like they are her own. At Will's side, Hannibal is looking up at the cheap ceiling fan that squeaks now and then; his fingers are running up and down Will's scar along his gut. Will refuses to touch the puckered skin in Hannibal's own flesh where bullets winged a deadly monster from killing that which he loved most. (He will learn to; she already has kissed it in the sunlight and felt relief.) 

One or all of them are trembling, just a little. It's a strange sort of silence. 

Will breaks it. "It would have been easier if I had just given in, wouldn't it?"

Hannibal looks at him, and then up at her. His face is unreadable, and she is winding her fingers tighter and tighter in Will's hair. 

Will continues: "If I had been just like you."

"You are just like us," Abigail says without thinking, and as her cheeks color, she leans closer to kiss Will's ear and whisper it again. The look Hannibal gives her is so incredibly fond that she aches for him. 

Hannibal looks back at the ceiling and Will lets out a breath he might have been holding his entire life.

The good doctor takes Will's hand and places it over his heart, fingers woven together. "Easier? Yes, it would have been. But it wouldn't have been nearly so interesting."

*  
Jamaica is their first stop; there, they find new faces and names. Abigail reads crime blogs and Dante's sonnets, teases Hannibal about the "Bride of Dracula" he left behind with Jack Crawford. He takes her to a performance of _Suddenly, Last Summer_ and eats her out afterwards on the beach. When she comes, savage and unhinged, he tells her that he's made no plans to call on Starling. It's a strange and unfortunate position to find herself in, crying in his lap and unable to speak her fears aloud. 

She lost him before; there are all kinds of ways she can lose him again. _Where is your strength now_ , she thinks as he coddles her with his sandy fingers in her hair and his endearments in her ear. 

When they return, formal wear in shambles and hearts raw, Will tells them he has a present for them in the basement. Will looks calm, terrifyingly calm. 

What they find, trussed up and barely conscious against a concrete wall: Dr. Frederick Chilton, MD. His tongue is missing. 

Abigail smiles so hard it hurts. 

*  
After, Hannibal sleeps like the dead. Abigail helps with the mess and the dishes, sipping Sauternes and humming Chopin. "My dad was your first?" she asks, waiting for Will's guard to rise, for his teeth to come out.

He doesn't answer, merely refills her glass with more Château d'Yquem and continues to scrub. (He is considering her turn of phrase, a million different answers filling his throat.)

"You killed him, Will," she says, delighted and confused. Killing somebody is the ugliest thing in the world, he had told her; she is certain that he still believes it.

"Did I?"

There was a peculiar and suspicious premeditation in the way Will had been prepared for this meal. Cilantro and shallots were neatly chopped; crema purchased and chilled; limes cut in neat quarters. The chile was fire roasted the day before, a colorful mix of peppers handpicked at the markets. Tortillas were homemade, and so delicious they ate them afterwards with drizzled honey. 

While Hannibal and Abigail had been out, Will had braised that feisty tongue in beer; then, he had diced and sautéed. Neatly combined together, three tacos de lengua were plated with slices of avocado. For all the effort involved, it wasn't much but a late night snack for the three of them. Hannibal made such a sigh when he finished, and sucked hard on Will's fingers afterwards. 

She looks up from her glass. "Chilton was your apology." 

Will nods and there, _there_ in his eyes is the vulnerability she was hoping for. "You're not the only one afraid that he will leave you."

*  
On their way to Florence, "Dr. Fell" and his family rent out an apartment in Paris. It is Abigail's request and Hannibal finds it hard to deny her anything. The first week is spent between sheets and at cafés to refine her palate. Will is teaching her to cook; Hannibal, the piano. 

The second week is spent at the Louvre, and any institution of art that Dr. Fell can beg entrance. He has plans, special plans for Italy; the French will suit his purposes. Platinum blonde and dressed in fine silk, a Minnesota-born girl fakes a glazed over look as she views the masterpieces of the old world. Her education continues, now without the rubber stamp and singular focus of the FBI. 

Will is not quite the aesthete, but he doesn't like to be left behind, left out. On a particularly sunny day, she stands next to him, admiring a marble Diana recline with her arm around a majestic stag. He trembles next to her and she has to pull him away from his own shadow, even if the fingers clutching her wrist will bruise her skin. 

The third week arrives and she is returning to their apartment with blood on her hands and a smile on her lips. She had hoped to strike earlier, show her metal and her skill; but Will had surprised her so in Jamaica, and it had muted her own needs. 

Will's in the entry way, and she realizes he's been waiting for her, he's been waiting since Marathon for her to do this. He moans out something pitiful when she dirties his hair and skin and shirt with it, the sticky remnants of a life she carefully held in her hands and a body she disposed of. She smudges his scarred cheek with a bloody thumb before pushing her fingers into his mouth. "Why do you do this," he asks softly when she pulls out her forefinger to suck on it herself, taste the blood and the sweat and Will. 

Abigail shakes her head and doesn't dare answer. _I need this, _she thinks, without any semblance of clarification of what she actually needs. He gives it to her soon after, his tongue sliding from her cunt to her clit. She feels her hands get cleaner and cleaner the harder she grips his face and hair with her bloody hands.__

__She loves, she loves, she loves him when he's like this; unstable and pure. Freddie had warned her. "Because he is _insane_." (Abigail does not yet know the hand Will had in Freddie's death, bright and horrible. When he tells her, when he admits everything he did, she will sing song in his ear, "what a clever, clever boy," and he will surrender to a proud, horrible, so horrible smile that he has held back for years.)_ _

__They shower together afterwards, washing each other's skin and sticky hair. (Their soaps are custom built, exquisite and unusual. Ambergris, after all, is legal in only a handful of countries.) Here, as the blood washes away, he is far gentler as the bloodlust shared by two fades into fondness._ _

__Leaving him to towel off and shave, she staggers out on naked feet, an uneven gait as she wanders towards the kitchen for coffee, pastry, some fruit. Hannibal's refreshing his elaborate coffee pot when she arrives. Abigail does not bother to mask her face with innocence, simply winks and scouts for a teacup._ _

__"Be more careful next time," he warns, gently._ _

__She is not quite sure what he means; the dead victim, or their living prey. He would have good reasons for both._ _

__Shooing him away with her hand, she fills her cup with the steaming, perfect brew; it's hotter than blood but just as ephemeral. She leans her face up to kiss him lightly, a kiss meant to be perfunctory but the race of her heart gives her away. He deepens it, which he often does, and his hand covers her neck._ _

__"I mean it," he says. "You are precious to me."_ _

__What he means: he has lost her before; there are all kinds of ways he can lose her again._ _

__His words are stronger than the cut of a knife against skin. She shivers, and his hand lifts to her cheek, holding her still. They stand there, mirror to mirror, until her heart beat evens._ _

__*  
Intermission at the Opera Bastille finds them whispering in the lobby over champagne. There is a twinkle in her eyes as Hannibal teases her about the rudeness of Italian men, and Will promises to lend his imagination if she feels uninspired. She admires her nails as Hannibal leans over to kiss Will in public, chaste and sweet. There will be none of that sweetness tonight when no one is watching them. _ _

__They have many masks; today, they are Dr. Fell and his shy lover, accompanied by Dr. Fell's well-spoken daughter. Tomorrow, they move to Florence, with their collective eye on suites in the Palazzo Capponi._ _

__It's all the better that the world doesn't know who these three monsters truly are._ _

__She must have been faraway, for Will slides his thumb along her palm to get her attention. Abigail looks to see his eyes locked on hers, still a rare occurrence, and she treasures it. "You alright?" he asks. Hannibal's hand is at her back, a comfort._ _

__She thinks about the question before she answers. "Yes, oh yes."_ _

**Author's Note:**

> xoxox to my a&v&l for enabling, encouragement, and beta


End file.
